Here I offer three indisputable facts, that everyone already knows, that thoroughly indict our culture and way of life. If we trace the roots of these facts, they lead us, invariably, to the foundation of Civilization, our own culture, a relative newcomer in the pantheon of human cultures. We, civilized humans, like to think of Civilization as some kind of evolutionary leap forward for humanity, as a cultural advance over more “primitive” cultures, and even as an indicator of the superiority of human intelligence over the rest of creation. These three facts should disavow us of these beliefs, once and for all, along with everything else we think we know about how to live in the world.

People outside of our culture, the precious few uncivilized, indigenous people left in the world, see civilization as something else. They see civilization as a heartless killer, an enslaver of people, a poisoner of water and a raper of the land. They see civilization as a terrible plague, and a disease of the mind. It’s about time we recognize the acuity of their assessment. Here are three facts you already know that prove it.

Fact #1, Overpopulation You must have heard about this. For most of human history, the Earth’s population of human beings grew, like that of most other large animals, very slowly, related largely to our expanding range. Then, about 10,000 years ago, coincident with the birth of Civilization, human population exploded at an exponential rate, and our global population began doubling in ever shorter time-spans. The Earth’s population recently doubled from 3 to 6 billion people in less than 40 years. We’ve since surpassed 7 billion on our way to 11 by the middle of the century, barring a catastrophic population collapse of some kind.

Of course, at some point, a catastrophic collapse becomes inevitable. That’s the problem with exponential growth. You can’t have exponential growth, forever, in a finite world. This exponential population growth pattern is a unique characteristic of our culture. No indigenous cultures share this characteristic. In the 10,000+- year history of civilization, this population problem has caused much bloodshed and suffering, and we can expect it to cause much, much, more in the future. Attempts by civilized people to solve this problem, throughout history, have failed miserably, despite all the latest technology.

Today, we think it will be easier to colonize Mars than control our own exploding population. That’s how intractable our population problem has become. Of course, you knew this already, and there’s nothing newsworthy about it, but it says something about how we, as civilized people, do things. Overpopulation stresses social cohesion and brings out the worst in people, but overpopulation takes it’s biggest toll on the environment. Which brings us to…

Fact #2, The Environmental Crisis Even if you live under a rock, you’ve heard of this. Al Gore has a new movie about it. Thanks to the endless “awareness raising” efforts of myriad environmental organizations, pretty much everyone knows that “the environment” needs help. Everyone knows about global warming, even if they deny it. Not everyone knows that we’ve lost half of the world’s biodiversity since 1970, and that species are going extinct at a rate of 100 to 150 every day. Not everyone knows that this is the highest rate of extinction in geological history, since the Cretaceous Extinction Event that wiped out the dinosaurs more than sixty million years ago. You know about the environmental crisis, but the truth about it is even worse than you know.

Not coincidentally, the Environmental Crisis also began about 10,000 years ago, with the advent of the farming lifestyle in the Middle East, considered to be the birth of modern civilization. Early farmers deforested huge swaths of land in the Middle East to grow wheat and barley, which quickly exhausted the fertility of the thin soil. They then abandoned the fallow, depleted land to erosion and continued to slash and burn their way through abundant forest rich with fish and game. That’s how they turned “The Fertile Crescent” into the Sahara Desert.

Now ask yourself, “Why did the people who founded our culture, and gave birth to Civilization, burn millions of acres of wild, abundant forests, unleashing plague after plague of pests, to grow wheat and barley, thousands of years before the invention of bread?” What do you think they did with all of that barley and wheat? They made beer out of it. Beer! Which brings us to the third fact you already know about.

Fact # 3, Alcoholism Alcoholism is a debilitating disease that destroys the life of the alcoholic, and creates dysfunction within the alcoholic’s family. One-hundred alcoholics, and their dysfunctional families create a dysfunctional community, and a hundred beer-soaked generations of dysfunctional community is what we call “The Birth of Civilization.” Alcoholism is so deeply entwined with our culture that Civilization could rightly be called “Alcohol Culture.” If you doubt this, I recommend a Discovery Channel documentary titled “How Beer Saved the World.” In the video, they assume that Civilization is a great thing, but they outline the hard evidence for beer’s role in it pretty well.

Alcoholism requires a lot of work. It’s hard to keep that thirst quenched, and alcohol culture quickly devolved into slavery, as evidenced by great monuments like the Sphinx and the pyramids of Ancient Egypt. The workers who built the pyramids were paid in beer, and people willingly sold themselves into slavery for it.

We’ve all seen what alcoholism does to people. We’ve all seen what alcoholism does to families. We know that alcoholism is an enormous social problem, but try to imagine how much alcoholism has twisted our culture, from the beginning. You knew alcoholism was a serious problem, but, like the environmental crisis, it’s worse than you can imagine.

An alcoholic lifestyle will never be sustainable. Alcoholism creates an imbalance that no technology can overcome, but which requires constant technological innovation to mitigate. Alcohol culture compensates for this imbalance by constantly expanding, and in it’s relentless expansion, Civilization exterminates and enslaves every sustainable indigenous culture it encounters along the way. That’s the “civilized” way of doing things.

Let these three facts sink in. Take some time to think about them. Then, take a look at President Trump. Take a good long look at Donald J Trump, because Civilization is a machine that consumes the lives of billions of people, and wipes out over a hundred species of plant and animal every day, in order to produce Donald J Trump, and people just like him. We’ve sacrificed damn near everything natural, beautiful and alive in the whole world, so we could have the Trump we deserve, before we keel over and die from the overwhelming toxicity of our own sick culture.

We’ve hit rock bottom, folks. Face it. We need to sober up, now, or we are going to die. Forget the Democrats; they can’t be trusted. Forget the Constitution; it never worked. Forget democracy; it gave us Trump. Everything we know is wrong. Our culture, Civilization, is the product of hundreds of generations of alcoholic dysfunction. We need to get away from that alcoholic mindset altogether if we want to survive. It’s not going to be easy, and we’re going to need help, but we have got to do it, and we’ve got to do it now.

The remaining traditional indigenous cultures of the world remind us that human beings can live in a sober and respectful way, and that some still do. We’re not flawed creatures. We were born into a sick culture, and traumatized by our alcoholic ancestry. Indigenous people can show us how to live in the world, without enslaving it, and ourselves, to an insatiable thirst for more. But first, we need to admit that we have a problem.

In separate interactions with two different liberal lawyers, recently, I heard the same phrase uttered as an excuse for human caused environmental devastation. It sounded all too familiar. It’s a deceptively simple phrase, but it conceals one of the fundamental myths of this new science-based religion called “Secular Humanism.” Both of these gentlemen expressed this phrase as a personal belief. “I just think that we are a species in the midst of adolescence.” or “I believe that we are a species in adolescence,” was more or less how they put it. That’s a strange thing to believe.

Secular humanists have adopted this strange belief in the adolescence of the human species because of their strange belief in science. Believing in science is pretty weird too, if you ask me. Not that anyone did, but still, it’s one thing to learn about the world using the scientific method, and it’s something else altogether to “believe in” science.

Secular humanists think that our objective, scientific understanding of the universe is the greatest thing since sliced bread. They see the emergence of science as a guiding light that will see us through this difficult phase of our evolution, our adolescence, if you will. We must be doing something right, they reason, if we can put a nuclear powered car on Mars, calculate the moment of the Big Bang to the millisecond and find the goddamn Higgs boson, and they assume there is a point to it all. They see the scientific viewpoint as superior. Our best hope for survival, as a species, they will tell you, is more science and technology. That’s what I mean when I say that Secular Humanists “believe in science.”

Unfortunately, the facts on the ground tell us that most of today’s really pressing crises originated with some new scientific development, and the technology it inspired. For instance we face Global Warming because of certain developments in chemistry, a few mechanical inventions, and a hell of a lot of marketing. The knowledge that science gives us, has led to horrific disasters and environmental devastation around the globe. From the spectre of nuclear warfare to global climate change, to overpopulation, every new scientific discovery leads to new technology, which creates a new crisis.

We tell ourselves that all of this destruction is part of our “education” as a species. We tell ourselves that we are a good species, and we are on the right track, but we just need a little more time to reach our maturity. If we think about human beings as an “adolescent species” does that also mean that we should also think of the genocide of the American Indians as a college “panty raid,” slavery as a sort of fraternity hazing, and the whole environmental crisis as just a nasty hangover from doing too many Jagger-bombs at that kegger last night? Perhaps we should just say: “boys will be boys.” about these dark chapters in in our history, because these were just the youthful indiscretions of an adolescent species, and someday, we’ll grow out of it, get a job, and settle down.

Of course, if we actually applied what we know about science to this new myth, we’d realize that adolescence happens to individuals, not species. Individuals reach a stage where they no longer need the direct care and supervision of their parents, but have very little experience to draw from in their encounters in the real world. Adolescence never happens to a whole species at once. Every species is fully mature at the moment it evolves into existence. There are no “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” in nature.

Species evolve in response to the pressures and limitations placed on them by their environment. If the species survives, it is only because it’s particular adaptations are suited to the challenges of the environment they face at that moment. Species don’t evolve with adaptations suited to some future world, or with adaptations that take a few millennium to refine. The idea of a species in adolescence has no basis in science at all.

Every generation of every species comes with a fully mature set of time-tested adaptations that prepare it for survival within the limits set by its environment. That’s why you will never hear a biologist say, of an invasive species, for instance: “Well, Zebra mussels are an adolescent species. They want to get out and see the world, but we think that eventually they will return to their home range and settle down as the species matures.”

…or of an endangered species: “We think that the declining numbers of Northern spotted owls in Northern California forests is the result of the owls engaging in risky behavior. We think the owls are ‘acting out’ in reaction to losing so much of their habitat to logging. Spotted owls are an adolescent species, and we think this is just a temporary phase. We just need to give the owls some space, and let nature take its course.” Nor will you find any such nonsense in biology textbooks.

Why then, do you suppose, has this idea of an adolescent species, homo adolescence, if you will, has become such a widespread belief among Secular Humanists, who, because of their high regard for science, should know better?

It might be because Secular Humanists, like most people, prefer literary metaphor to real science. It might be because most Secular Humanists just haven’t examined that aspect of their belief system very closely, or it could be because Secular Humanists simply cannot face the fact that we are not looking at the youthful indiscretion of a species nearing maturity, but instead, we are witnessing the collapse of a suicidal culture, that is taking science, democracy, all of our beloved technology, and everything that makes us feel superior to the rest of nature, with it. The real answer, of course, is “all of the above.”

In truth, we’re a great species! We’re a mature, time tested species, that has achieved global distribution. There’s nothing wrong with us as a species. As a species, we’ve developed thousands of cultures, suited to life in the place they originated. We just happened to be born into one particularly destructive culture, that has already destroyed an alarming amount of the world’s biologic, as well as human, cultural diversity. There’s nothing wrong with us as people, but the way we live, the way we think, and the way we see ourselves in relationship to the rest of nature couldn’t be more wrong. If we hope to survive, as a species, our culture has got to change.

The bluffs between Redway and Garberville have been closed for a few weeks now. This two mile stretch of road hugs a sheer cliff of crumbly sandstone which descends precipitously into the churning waters of the Eel River below. With this narrow pass closed to all traffic save kayaks and canoes, these two tiny towns, Redway, and Garberville, which once orbited each other like binary stars, now face separation and isolation.

More than just a major inconvenience for everyone in Southern Humboldt, this severed link may forever mark a division point in SoHum culture. Evolutionary biology and island bio-geography can tell us a lot about what happens to populations and cultures who become isolated from each other. They tell us that subtle differences within connected populations, can lead to marked differences between closely related, but isolated populations.

Today, the subtle cultural differences between Eastern Southern Humboldt, including Garberville, and everything that drains into it down the Alder Point Rd, and Western Southern Humboldt, including Redway, and whatever hasn’t already fallen into the ocean West of it, seem small. For instance, people from Eastern Southern Humboldt are more likely to push a junk car over a steep cliff, whereas people in Western Southern Humboldt generally set fire to junk cars along the roadside. Over time, however, and in isolation, these minute differences often evolve into distinguishing characteristics. Unless the bluffs are repaired soon, the difference between East and West SoHum may become as stark as the difference between North and South Korea.

Today, the differences are subtle, but noticeable. In Garberville, for example, when someone sees someone else passed out on the sidewalk, they call the Sheriff. They say: “There’s someone passed out cold on the sidewalk in Garberville. Isn’t that illegal? Can you come down here and arrest them?”

Whereas is Redway, if someone comes across the same scene, an unconscious person in the sidewalk, they would call an ambulance and say something like: “Hey man, there’s, like, somebody laying here unconscious on the sidewalk. I just thought that this kinda seems like one of those health-things that you guys help out with.”

Over time, these subtle differences may become magnified. In the future, Garberville may get 35% of the electricity it uses from the alcoholics it incinerates, while everyone in Redway will get CPR certified, but hope they never have to use it because they were pretty high when they took the course.

Another subtle difference between G,ville and R,town has to do with self image. Garberville is a much more image conscious town than Redway. I think there are about five guys in Garberville, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses who wear a sport-coat and tie. Karen Miclette and her crew at Karen Miclette Insurance always dress professionally, as do the people at the banks and credit unions. When you add them all up, that’s a whole bunch of people in uncomfortable shoes and stiff scratchy collars, wondering why the rest of us can’t make more of an effort to look presentable when we’re in town.

Besides the people who “dress for success” around town, there are quite a few people who have an idea about what Garberville, and specifically, people in Garberville should look like, and they put a lot of effort into keeping up appearances.

Redway, by contrast, just makes itself comfortable. The polyester uniforms worn by the employees at the Shell station might be the most formal attire you’ll see on your visit to Redway, where most people can’t even keep their ass-crack covered.

In the future, Garberville might have hidden cameras all over town, and big screen monitors on the back-side of street signs. When you pass one of them, you will see the least flattering picture they took of you with a caption like, “Do you see what you’d look like on TV?” or “What would your mother say if she saw you dressed like that?”

Eventually, bouncers will come and escort you to the the edge of town. Meanwhile, Redway will look like a clothing optional retirement community with lots and lots of dogs.

These are just a few of the ways that long-term closure of the bluffs between Redway and Garberville could negatively effect our unique SoHum culture. We need each other, East and West, to survive, and thrive as one whole community. Redwood Drive must be repaired, now, before it is too late.

I can’t believe how rapidly smoking culture has evolved, just in my lifetime. When I was a kid, my parents both smoked cigarettes… indoors. Damn near every table in the house had an ashtray on it, some had two. They had fancy ashtrays, for special occasions, and they had everyday ashtrays. They even had extra ashtrays in a drawer in case they had company.

I remember that you used to be able to buy ashtrays in stores, and they had lots of different kinds. They had cheap disposable ashtrays stamped from foil,

nice expensive ashtrays that looked like they belonged on an executive’s desk,

glass ashtrays,

metal ashtrays,

ashtrays carved from solid rock,

and an amazing assortment of ceramic ashtrays.

These things really existed. I distinctly remember ashtrays,

avocado-green boomerang-shaped ashtrays,

round mosaic-tiled ashtrays, as big as a dinner plate, that weighed at least ten lbs,

stacks of brightly-colored mod-looking ashtrays manufactured from some sort of polymer resin.

I know I remember ashtrays.

You would see one of these things, and you immediately knew what it was. You wouldn’t dream of using it for anything else. Even if it was brand new, people would look at you like you had lost your mind if you decided to, for instance, eat pudding out of an ashtray.

The intended purpose of an ashtray was to provide a non-flammable place to rest a lit cigarette, a suitable receptacle for flicked ashes, and a surface onto which a cigarette butt could be safely snuffed out. Ashtrays came in a bewildering array styles because people wanted their ashtrays to match the decor of the rooms those ashtrays would inhabit.

Do you remember ashtrays? I know there are young people out there right now thinking “ash trays?”, like they never saw those two words combined before. They have no idea what I’m talking about. They’ve never seen an ashtray, not even on TV. If you wanted to show a kid an ashtray, where would you go? If you wanted an ashtray for yourself, where would you go to buy one?

The disappearance of ashtrays, coupled with the number of people I’ve seen sitting under the eves of their own homes tells me that very few people smoke cigarettes indoors anymore. If you can’t do it in stores, bars or restaurants, and nowadays people won’t even do it in their own homes, cigarette smoking seems to have become an exclusively outdoor activity.

I’m mostly happy about this. I don’t smoke cigarettes, and I have become much more sensitive to cigarette smoke. I can’t imagine living with someone who insisted on smoking cigarettes indoors today, but I also feel for smokers. It must be a drag to have to excuse yourself from a warm cozy room to go stand outside in the cold, rain, snow, wind, heat, whatever, with nothing but a coffee can full of sand for your butts, like some kind of exile. That’s harsh.

At the same time, marijuana smoking has become much more accepted. As a result, you can find boutiques all over this country that cater to marijuana smokers. You’ll find these shops stocked to the gills with a dizzying array of new smoking products ranging from vaporizers and dabbing nails, to hookahs and bongs to bubblers, hand pipes and rolling papers, no ashtrays, oddly enough, but tons of other smoking accessories.

I don’t know what pot smokers are supposed to do with the ashes that result from smoking marijuana, but the free market has provided them with a million new ways to turn marijuana into ash. After that, pot smokers are pretty much on their own.

From the look of all of this new smoking gear, nearly everyone who smokes marijuana, does it indoors. Half of the new vaporizers plug into a wall outlet. Not many of those out in the woods. Nobody takes a glass bong the size of a bassoon to go get high in the park. Giant, conspicuous smoking apparatuses like that, stay at home, in a room.

I’m sure that part of the reason people smoke pot at home is the legal environment. Because of marijuana prohibition, pot smokers have gotten used to smoking in secret, so they do it privately, behind closed doors. Even now that two states have made smoking marijuana a legal recreational activity, both Washington and Colorado still prohibit marijuana use in public. It seems that even as legalization takes hold, considerable social pressure remains to keep marijuana smoking an indoor activity.

Today, we see cigarette smokers outside under the eves with their cancer sticks and their can of sand, while marijuana smokers sit comfy and warm in their blacklit bedrooms with their Rube Goldberg meets Dr. Seuss smoking contraptions,

and maybe an old saucer that they drop their ashes into, or perhaps a potted plant. I use an oyster shell, personally. I don’t know what other people do.

It’s got to be rough for people who smoke both marijuana and cigarettes. They smoke some pot, but then they’ll have to step outside for a cigarette. They’ll have to ask someone to hold their contraption, go stand under the eve, smoke their butt, come back in, enjoy a few tokes, then it’s back out under the eves again. These people need revolving doors, and when was the last time you saw one of those.

It kind of reminds me of segregation. I know it’s not the same thing by a long shot, but cigarette smokers used to rule the world. They wouldn’t even ask, “Do you mind if I smoke?” before they lit up. The air belonged to them, and if you didn’t like it, too bad. Businesses put ashtrays everywhere, just to remind cigarette smokers that they were welcome to fill the establishment with foul smelling fumes, and free matches, bearing the company logo were always close by.

Now cigarette smokers stand out in the cold like dogs who don’t know how to behave indoors, while marijuana smokers sit on the sofa in climate controlled comfort, fondling their preposterous pyrex party pipes, looking around for someplace to dump their freshly cashed bowl. My how the tables have turned, but I’ll bet you won’t find an ashtray on any of them.

I love spiders. I have hundreds of pictures of them. We have a lot spiders here in SoHum. They inhabit these woods and our home in great abundance and variety. I find them endlessly fascinating and very much enjoy their company. They make great subjects for photography. Unlike most wild animals, they tend to sit still, which makes the job a lot easier.

I have a lot of respect for spiders. They’ve “seen” a lot on this here rock. According to archeologists, spiders’ ancient ancestors were among the first sea animals to venture onto dry land, and they colonized it aggressively. 200 million years ago, 50 millions years before the first insects, flying or otherwise, most of the major spider families of modern times, had already achieved worldwide distribution.

God only knows what they ate for those first 50 million years or so, but clearly, spiders have remarkable survival skills. For 150 million years they have adapted to everything that nature has thrown at them, including us, and they continue to flourish. Even as we instigate cataclysmic changes in our environment, triggering a massive wave of extinction around the globe, perhaps including our own, spiders seem to mostly take it all in stride.

Those who call human beings the dominant species on the planet, should consider this: Spiders outnumber us, all together they outweigh us, and they will almost certainly outlast us. In their long history on this planet, the rise and fall of humanity will amount to nothing but a brief, insignificant memory to them, like a TV show that lasted only one season, or a long evening spent with a rude dinner companion.

In our unholy quest to transform all of creation to our own purposes, we have never found a way to exploit spiders for commercial purposes, nor have we ever successfully weaponized spiders. Despite their large numbers and close proximity, they don’t compete with us for anything. They carry on all around us, unnoticed, mostly unstudied, and completely undaunted, patiently awaiting the day when they will, inevitably, bury us in cobwebs like they did the dinosaurs, the wooly mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger.

I used the word “seen” in quotes earlier, because most spiders have very poor vision. Spiders gather most of their sensory information from the extremely sensitive hairs on their legs and bodies. These hairs can detect very subtle air movements and vibrations. Web spiders also “see” with their webs, using their legs to sense every ripple and wave that passes through it.

While most of the creatures in the animal kingdom now take stereoscopic vision for granted, most spiders have a very different, and much more rudimentary visual system. Most spiders have an array of eight or more somewhat directionally focused eyes. However, these tiny eyes, in most cases, probably don’t send enough information to produce a meaningful image. They can probably tell, for instance, that it is darker to their left, than to their right, but little more.

Because of this unusual visual system spider faces seem especially alien to us. I think this may have a lot to do with our attitude towards them. Even insects, with their single pair of large compound eyes, seem more like us, than spiders. While many people dislike annoying flies, few people fear them. On the other hand, spiders rarely annoy anyone, but many people fear them. While many flying insects actively seek us out and bite us, leaving painful, itchy welts, spiders only bite in self defense, and even then, only rarely.

A few spiders see very well, with stereoscopic vision, and use it to navigate their world, and hunt prey. Both wolf spiders and jumping spiders respond primarily to visual stimuli, and they both have especially large eyes, for spiders. Neither wolf spiders, nor jumping spiders content themselves to spin webs and wait for whatever comes along. In stead these spiders go out into the world, with big bright, sharply focused eyes, looking for fun and adventure.

Wolf Spider

With a large pair of front facing eyes, jumping spiders have especially endearing faces. Most jumping spiders stay quite small, but here in SoHum, I have seen some fairly large ones, at least big enough to photograph.

The spiders I find most endearing, however, are the ones I know most intimately, and I know them so intimately because they have lived with us for so long, and in such great numbers. “Daddy Long-Legs” spiders (Pholcus Phalangiodes) make cheerful easy going housemates, even if they do leave their webs and food remains all over the house.

They have a reputation for cannibalism, but I’ve never seen it. Quite the contrary. These spiders seem extremely tolerant of each other, and unlike most spiders, spend a lot of time in close proximity to each other, sharing the same web. I’ve often seen large pholcids steal food from smaller ones, but I’ve never seen a large pholcid attack a small one. I’ve seen them eat other spiders, including wolf spiders at least as large as themselves, but never each other.

Large and small pholcids happily share the same web, stepping over and around each other without hostility or fear. I’ve even seen two pholcids work together to “rope” a large fly snared in their shared web. The fly would have doubtless have struggled free from either of them, but working together they were able to subdue it. The two spiders then shared their meal.

I’ve watched them quite a bit, and for a year or so, I kept a journal of their daily lives and development. I gave them names like “Charlotte” “Wilbur” and “Templeton” and followed them from early adolescence, through several molts, to adulthood, mating and parenthood.

Pholcids love tenderly, and spend a lot of time “holding hands” with their chosen partner before mating. While male and female pholcids look identical to the naked eye for most of their lives, a mature and receptive female puts on a spectacular outfit to accentuate her femininity. She will invariably attract a mature male, perhaps a few, and she will eventually decide between them.

Female, in her sexy mating outfit, on right.

Then the couple will spend several days, up to two weeks or more, hanging out very close together in this “hand holding” phase. I’ve never seen pholcids mate. I think they do it in the dead of night while we are asleep, but soon, the female will have an egg sack clutched I her jaws. I have however, caught other species of spider in the act, I don’t think I’ll lose my wordpress account for posting hard-core spider-porn here.

Some would argue that these tiny invertebrates, lack any capacity for caring or emotion, but I disagree. One of these two young lovers got pinched in a window screen and died from the injury. It’s partner stayed with the dead spider for almost a week afterward. Yes, I believe that spiders love, and mourn.

Pholcid mothers devote themselves completely to raising their offspring. Once a pholcid mother has an egg sac in her jaws, she will not eat again until the young spiderlings have grown up and moved out. It takes several weeks for the eggs to incubate and hatch, and the young spiderlings stay with their mother for at least two more weeks, until their first molt.

Mama Pholcid with newly hatched spiderlings

After they molt, the young spiders strike out on their own, leaving their mother, in her web, surrounded by dozens of tiny, recently shed, exoskeletons. Female pholcids can raise more than one brood of spiderlings. Occasionally, I’ll find a mother pholcid with an egg sac, surrounded by the exoskeletons of her previous brood. I guess I should dust more.

What’s going on here really? I mean globally, environmentally and culturally, in the big picture? We can rule out stasis. We have certainly not achieved anything like stability or equilibrium. Look at the facts:

Our planet’s population doubled in the last 30 years. That’s not stable. Globally, bird, fish and amphibian populations continue to plummet. We lose, on average, 140 species a day to extinction making our age one of the greatest extinction events in the history of the world. Historic? Yes. Stable? No. Our planet’s temperature, stable for tens of thousands of years, has now begun to rise due to changes in the make-up of the atmosphere resulting from human industrial activity. So, no, even that’s not stable any more.

Clearly, we have not achieved any degree of equilibrium, or stability. Quite the contrary, we live in a time of accelerating change, as stability gives way to chaos and/or collapse, culturally and environmentally all over the world. What does this mean for us now? What does this mean for our future? Is all of this rapid change an achievement? Is this our destiny? Or, are these simply consequences, symptoms and indicators of failure?

Some might argue that human population explosion and global ecosystem collapse are not achievements in themselves, but instead are the unfortunate, but necessary byproduct our real cultural achievement, that is the evolution of human consciousness. This is the evolutionary awakening theory, and some believe it to be our destiny.

According to these happy people, what is happening in our minds, is a kind of high-speed evolution. So, while the population expands, and the natural world breaks down, our minds evolve into these enlightened, secular, scientific, artistic, technological, communicative beings, and that this evolutionary process has sped up, because having achieved physical perfection, we now evolve mentally, instead of physically, so it all happens a lot faster now. As a result, even though the world is falling apart, we stand at the precipice of a major global transformation. I know it sounds ridiculous, but some people genuinely believe this, or at least want to believe it.

I don’t argue the global transformation part. We are clearly in the midst of a global transformation. We have dramatically transformed the world, and continue to do so, but not in a good way. They see the transformation that I’m talking about. I, on the other hand, see no evidence of the transformation they are talking about.

These “evolutionary transformation” people believe that, despite poverty, genocide, slavery, technological warfare, greed, inequality and global environmental destruction, we as a species are getting smarter and better, faster than ever. And, that this high-speed evolution of human consciousness represents the highest aspirations of all of nature.

So, the rest of the species on earth, don’t really mind being wiped out, because we are the whole reason any of them ever existed in the first place, and now that we’ve reached this level of consciousness, we no longer need them. We just need to manifest this great global transformation, and everything is gonna be great!

It’s a very seductive, albeit chauvinistic, theory. I’d like to believe that there’s a purpose to all of this madness too, but I see no evidence to support it. I’m really not that impressed by human consciousness. I don’t think we’re so smart, and I really don’t think we’re that much smarter, as a species, than we were, say 30,000 years ago. In fact we may well have dumbed-down a bit. Certainly, I see no evidence of an intelligence that could transform the massive, real, evidence of our mass stupidity, into anything that could be called, on any level, a better world.

So, to me, this evolutionary transformation, or quantum leap forward or whatever you call it, is just magical thinking, an infantile, panglossian, solipsistic fantasy. No one wants to face the fact that we’re just digging ourselves a deeper and deeper hole, a hole we’ve been digging, not for 200 yrs, not 600 yrs, but 10,000 yrs at least. We’ve just dug faster in the last 600 yrs, and even faster still in the last 200, and we still haven’t struck gold.

What People Say:

If you haven't read john hardin's blog before, prepare to be shocked. I always am. (I can't help but enjoy it though...at least when I'm not slapping my hands on my computer desk and yelling at him.) He's sort of a local Jon Stewart only his writing hurts more because it is so close to people and places I love. Kym Kemp
...about, On The Money, The Collapsing Middle Class
... I think he really nails it, the middle class is devolving back into the working class. Pretty brilliant, IMO. Juliet Buck, Vermont Commons http://www.vtcommons.org/blog/middle-class-or-first-world-subsistence
BLOGS WE WATCH: John Hardin’s humorous, inappropriate, and sometimes antisocial SoHum blog is a one-of-a-kind feast or famine breadline banquet telling it like it is—or at least how it is through Mr. Hardin’s uniquely original point of view with some off-the-wall poetic licensing and colorful pics tossed in for good measure. For example, how it all went from this to that and how it all came about like the hokey pokey with your right foot out. You get the idea. Caution: this isn’t for everybody, especially those without a bawdy, bawdry, and tacky sense of humor. You know who you are. We liked it. (From the Humboldt Sentinel http://humboldtsentinel.com/2011/12/16/weekly-roundup-for-december-16-2011/)